Enter the Saint (11 page)

The searchers had also left him his cigarette-case and matches, and with some agility and a system of extraordinary contortions the Saint managed to get a cigarette into his mouth and light it. This feat of double-jointed juggling kept him entertained for about twenty minutes, but as the afternoon wore on he developed, in practice, a positively brilliant dexterity. He had nothing else to do.

His chief feeling was one of boredom, and he soon ceased to find any enjoyment in wondering how Dick Tremayne had fared in Bayswater. By five o’clock he was yawning almost continuously, having thought out seventeen orginal and fool-proof methods of swindling swindlers without coming within reach of the law, and this and similar exercises of ingenuity were giving him no more lack at all. He would have been a lot more comfortable if his hands had not been bound, but he decided not to release himself until there was good cause for it. The Saint knew the tactical advantage of keeping a card up his sleeve.

The room, without any noticeable means of ventilation, was growing hotter and stuffier, and the cigarettes he was smoking were not improving matters. Regretfully, the Saint resigned himself to giving up that pleasure, and composed himself on the bed again. Some time before he had heard a car humming up the short drive, and he was hazily looking forward to Hayn’s return and the renewed interest that that would bring. But the heaviness of the atmosphere did not conduce to mental alertness. The Saint found himself dozing… . For the second time, it was the sound of his door opening that roused him, and he blinked his eyes open with a sigh.

It was Edgar Hayn who came in. Physically he was in much worse case than the Saint, for he had had no sleep at all since the Friday night, and his mind had been much less carefree. His tiredness showed in the pallor of his face and the bruise-like puffiness of his eyes, but he had the air of one who feels himself the master of a situation.

“Evening,” murmured Simon politely.

Hayn came over to the bedside, his lips drawn back in an unlovely smile.

“Still feeling bumptious, Templar?” he asked.

“Ain’t misbehavin’,” answered the Saint winningly. “I’m savin’ my love for you.”

The man who had held the bludgeon at lunch stood in the doorway. Hayn stood aside and beckoned him in. “There are some friends of yours downstairs,” said Hayn. “I should like to have you all together.”

“I should be charmed to oblige you-as the actress said to the bishop,” replied the Saint. And he wondered whom Hayn could be referring to, but he showed nothing of the chill of uneasiness that had leaped at him for an instant like an Arctic wind.

He was not left long in doubt.

The bludgeon merchant jerked him to his feet and marched him down the corridor and down the stairs, Hayn bringing up the rear. The door of a room opening off the hall stood ajar, and from within came a murmur of voices which faded into stillness as their footsteps were heard approaching. Then the door was kicked wide, and the Saint was thrust into the room.

Gwen Chandler was there-he saw her at once. There were also three men whom he knew, and one of them was a dishevelled Dicky Tremayne.

Hayn closed the door and came into the centre of the room. “Now, what about it, Templar?” he said.

“What, indeed?” echoed the Saint. His lazy eyes shifted over the assembled company. “Greetings,
Herr Braddon,” he murmured. “Hullo, Snake… . Great heavens, Snake!-what’s the matter with your face?”

“What’s the matter with my face?” Ganning snarled.

“Everything, honeybunch,” drawled the Saint. “I was forgetting. You were born like that.”

Ganning came close, his eyes puckered with fury.

“I owe you something,” he grunted, and let fly with both fists.

The Saint slipped the blows, and landed a shattering kick to the Snake’s shins. The Braddon interposed a foot between the Saint’s legs, and as Simon went down Ganning loosed off with both feet… .

“That’ll do for the present,” Hayn cut in at last.

He took Templar by the collar and yanked him into a sitting position on a chair.

“You filthy blots!” Tremayne was raving, with the veins standing out purply on his forehead. “You warts-you flaming, verminous …”

It was Braddon who silenced him, with a couple of vicious, backhand blows across the mouth. And Dick Tremayne, bound hand and foot, wrestled impotently with ropes that he could not shift.

“We’ll hear the Haynski speech,” Simon interrupted. “Shut up, Dicky! We don’t mind, but it isn’t nice for Gwen to have to watch!” He looked across at the girl, fighting sobbingly in Hayn’s hold. “It’s all right, Gwen, old thing,” he said. “Keep smiling, for Jerry’s sake. We don’t worry about anything that these dregs can do. Don’t let them see they can hurt you!”

Hayn passed the girl over to Braddon and Ganning and went over to the Saint’s chair. “I’m going to ask you one or two questions, Templar,” he said. “If you don’t want to let the Snake have another go at you, you’ll answer them truthfully.”

“Pleasure,” said the Saint briefly. “George Washington was the idol of my childhood.” Everything he had planned had suffered a sudden reversal. Gwen Chandler had been caught, and so had Dicky. Their only hope was in Roger Conway-and how long would it be before he discovered the disaster and got busy?… The Saint made up his mind.

“How many of you are there?”

“Seventy-six,” said the Saint. “Two from five- just like when you were at Borstal.” There was no one behind him. He had got his legs well back under the chair. His arms were also reaching back, and he was edging his little knife out of its sheath. “You can save the rest of your questions,” he said, “I’ll tell you something. You’ll never get away with this. You think you’re going to find out all about my organization, the plans I’ve made, whether I’ve arranged for a squeal to the police. Then you’ll countermove accordingly. Hold the line while I laugh!”

“I don’t think so,” said Hayn.

“Then you don’t think as much as a weevil with sleepy sickness,” said the Saint equably. “You must think I was born yesterday! Listen, sweetheart! Last night I posted a little story to Inspector Teal, which he’ll get Monday morning. That letter’s in the post now-and nothing will stop it-and the letter to friend Henri I enclosed with it will make sure the dicks pay a lot of attention to the rest of the things I had to say. You haven’t an earthly, Edgarvitch!”

Hayn stepped back as if he had received a blow, and his face was horribly ashen. The Saint had never imagined that he would cause such a sensation.

“I told you he’d squeak!” Braddon was raging.

“You fool-I told you!”

“I told him, too,” said the Saint. “Oh, Edgar- why didn’t you believe your Uncle Simon?”

Hayn came erect, his eyes blazing. He swung round on Braddon. “Be quiet, you puppy!” he commanded harshly. “We’ve all come to this-that’s why we’ve got those aëroplanes. We leave to-night, and Teal can look for us tomorrow as long as he likes.”

He turned on the Saint.

“You’ll come with us-you and your friend. You will not be strapped in. Somewhere in mid-Channel we shall loop the loop. You understand?… Templar, you’ve undone years of work, and I’m going to make you pay for it! I shall escape, and after a time I shall be able to come back and start again. But you-“

“I shall be flitting through Paradise, with a halo round my hat,” murmured the Saint. “What a pleasant thought!” And as he spoke he felt his little knife biting into the cords on his wrists.

“We lose everything we’ve got,” Braddon babbled.

“Including your liberty,” said the Saint softly, and the knife was going through his ropes like a wire through cheese. They all looked at him. Something in the way he had spoken those three words, something in the taut purposefulness of his body, some strange power of personality, held them spellbound. Bound and at their mercy, for all they knew, an unarmed man, he was yet able to dominate them. There was hatred and murder flaring in their eyes, and yet for a space he was able to hold them on a curb and compel them to listen.

“I will tell you why you have lost, Hayn,” said the Saint, speaking in the same gentle, leisured tones that nevertheless quelled them as definitely as if he had backed them up with a gun. “You made the mistake of kidding yourself that when I told you I was going to put you in prison, I was bluffing. You were sure that I’d never throw away such an opening for unlimited blackmail. Your miserable warped temperament couldn’t conceive the idea of a man doing and risking all that I did and risked for nothing but an ideal. You judged me by your own crooked standards. That’s where you crashed, because I’m not a crook. But I’m going to make crooks go in fear of me. You and your kind aren’t scared enough of the police. You’ve got used to them-you call them by their first names and swap cigarettes with them when they arrest you-it’s become a game to you, with prison as a forfeit for a mistake, and bull-baiting’s just the same as tiddlywinks, in your lives. But I’m going to give you something new to fear- the Unknown. You’ll rave about us in the dock, and all the world will hear. And when we have finished with you, you will go to prison, and you will be an example to make others afraid. But you will tell the police that you cannot describe us, because there are still three left whom you do not know; and if we two came to any harm through you, the other three would deal with you and they would not deal gently. You understand? You will never dare to speak. …”

“And do you think you will ever be able to speak, Templar?” asked Hayn in a quivering voice, and his right hand was leaping to his hip pocket.

And the Saint chuckled, a low triumphant murmur of a laugh. “I’m sure of it!” he said, and stood up with the cords falling from his wrists.

The little throwing-knife flashed across the room like a chip of flying quicksilver, and Hayn, with his automatic half out of his pocket, felt a pain like the searing of a hot iron across his knuckles, and all the strength went out of his fingers.

Braddon was drawing at that moment, but the Saint was swift. He had Edgar Hayn in a grip of steel, and Hayn’s body was between the Saint and Braddon.

“Get behind him, Snake!” Braddon shrilled; but as Ganning moved to obey, the Saint reached a corner.

“Aim at the girl, you fool!” Hayn gasped, with the Saint’s hand tightening on his throat.

The Saint held Hayn with one hand only, but the strength of that hold was incredible. With the other hand, he was fumbling with his cigarette-case.

Braddon had turned his gun into Gwen Chandler’s face, while Ganning pinioned her arms. And the Saint had a cigarette in his mouth and was striking a match with one hand.

“Now do you surrender?” Braddon menaced.

“Like hell I do!” cried the Saint.

His match touched the end of his cigarette, and in the same movement he threw the cigarette far from him. It made an explosive hiss like a launched rocket, and in a second everything was blotted out in a swirl of impenetrable fog.

Templar pushed Hayn away into the opacity. He knew to a fraction of a square inch where his knife had fallen after it had severed the tendons of Hayn’s hand, and he dived for it. He bumped against Tremayne’s chair, and cut him free in four quick slashes.

Came, from the direction of the window, the sound of smashing glass. A shadow showed momentarily through the mist.

“Gwen!” It was Jerry Stannard’s agonized voice. The girl answered him. They sought each other in the obscurity.

A sudden draught parted the wreathing clouds of the Saint’s rapid-action smoke-screen. Stannard, with the girl in his arms, saw that the door was open. The Saint’s unmistakable silhouette loomed in the oblong of light. “Very, very efficient, my Roger,” said the Saint.

“You can always leave these little things to me,” said Mr. Conway modestly, leaning against the front door, with Edgar Hayn, Braddon, and Snake Ganning herded into a corner of the hall at the unfriendly end of his automatic.

Chapter XIV

THEY took the three men into a room where there was no smoke.

“It was my fiancee,” pleaded Jerry Stannard.

“That’s so,” said the Saint tolerantly. “Dicky, you’ll have to be content with Braddon. After all, he sloshed you when your hands were tied. But nobody’s going to come between the Snake and this child!”

It lasted half an hour all told, and then they gathered up the three components of the mess and trussed them very securely into chairs.

“There were two other men,” said the Saint hopefully, wrapping his handkerchief round a skinned set of knuckles.

“I stuck them up, and Jerry dotted them with a spanner,” said Conway. “We locked them in a room upstairs.”

The Saint sighed. “I suppose we’ll have to leave them,” he said. “Personally, I feel I’ve been done. These guys are rotten poor fighters when it comes to a straight-down.”

Then Conway remembered the message he had left in the landlord’s hands at the Bell, and they piled hurriedly into the car in which Conway and Stannard had driven up. They retrieved the message, tidied themselves, and dined. “I think we can call it a day,” said the Saint comfortably, when the coffee was on the table. “The check will be cashed on Monday morning, and the proceeds will be registered to the London Hospital, as arranged-less our ten per cent commission, which I don’t mind saying I think we’ve earned. I think I shall enclose one of my celebrated self-portraits-a case like this ought to finish in a worthy dramatic manner, and that opportunity’s too good to miss.”

He stretched himself luxuriously, and lighted a fresh cigarette which did not explode. “Before I go to bed tonight,” he said, “I’ll drop a line to old Teal and tell him where to look for our friends. I’m afraid they’ll have a hungry and uncomfortable night, but I can’t help that. And now, my infants, I suggest that we adjourn to London.”

They exchanged drinks and felicitations with the lord and master of the Bell, and it should stand to the eternal credit of that amiable gentleman that not by the twitch of an eyebrow did he signify any surprise at the somewhat battered appearance of two of the party. Then they went out to their cars.

“Who’s coming back with me?” asked Tremayne.

“I’m going back without you, laddie,” said Jerry Stannard. “Gwen’s coming with me!”